


Loki Laughed (While Odin Took out His Eye)

by rosewiththorns



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Fondling, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Kissing, M/M, Sexual Submission, blowjob
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 21:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4720268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosewiththorns/pseuds/rosewiththorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nik is broken and needs to be made whole again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loki Laughed (While Odin Took out His Eye)

**Author's Note:**

> This is set during the pre-season of 2005-2006 when Niklas Kronwall injured his knee. For those of you who aren’t mythology buffs, Loki is the prankster god in Norse myth, and Odin is one-eyed god of wisdom. Mamma is a Swedish word for mom.

Loki Laughed (While Odin Took out His Eye)

There wasn’t supposed to be pain as terrible as this, Nik thought—shooting pain that darted like lightning from his knees all over his body, curling his toes into pig’s ears, clenching his fingers so hard they dug into his sweaty palms, and blinding his eyes with what felt like enough saltwater to fill an ocean—especially not in what the newspapers were saying was supposed to be his breakout season (not that Nik was supposed to have a clue what the media was reporting about him, since, according to one hallowed hockey rule, he wasn’t supposed to read his own headlines). Well, he sure was broken, because the team doctor had informed him in the matter-of-fact tone medical professionals always used when relating soul-crushing knowledge that he had torn his ACL and MCL (which Nik figured meant he had won the knee injury double jackpot), and he definitely was out for months, given the surgery the doctor said his knee would be required to undergo. Leave it to him, the perennial screw-up, to find a surefire way to fuck up his breakout season before pre-season was over. 

Since he had told the doctor in no uncertain terms that he would rather be alone because being alone was better than dealing with the headache of a doctor’s smug attempt at a comforting bedside manner, Nik had plenty of time to reflect on just how he had fucked himself over in the stupid pre-season game against the Colorado Avalanche. He had gone along the boards and done another thing he wasn’t supposed to in not keeping his head up for the sort of huge hits he liked to deliver himself. There was probably a healthy dose of irony in there if he could have brought himself to appreciate the humor inherent in how he had sustained his injury, and Loki—that Norse trickster god that Nik used to beg his mamma to read him myths about before bedtime—would have laughed as he did at every cruel joke played on humanity. 

I should’ve kept both my damn eyes open, Nik chided himself, feeling about as ready to snap as a rubber band stretched beyond its limits. It was like in that story Mamma used to read about Odin where he ripped out his own eye to gain wisdom, and Nik decided Odin couldn’t have been too smart to tear out his own eye when real wisdom amounted to nothing more than keeping both eyes open all the time. Loki had probably laughed at Odin’s idiocy as he was no doubt cracking up over Nik’s plight. 

Thinking about Mamma would hurt less than imagining an ancient Norse deity turning his injury into fodder for a joke, so Nik tried to pretend that she was in the medical room with him, sitting beside him on the gunnery with her arms draped around his shaking shoulders. If she were here, she would whisper in his ear that everything was all right or at least would be all right, but she wasn’t here, and he really needed a God damn tissue this instant. 

Mamma would’ve whipped a tissue out of the handbag all females over the age of ten seemed legally obligated to haul wherever the hell they went if she were here, but, fumbling around on the table next to him for a Kleenex, Nik discovered that there were none in reach, not even the scratchy kind you could buy at Walmart very cheaply if you didn’t mind losing half your face every time you blew your nose. Of course there were no fucking tissues in the medical room. Hockey players weren’t supposed to cry, not even if they tore their ACL and MCL in one fell swoop. 

Spewing some of his favorite Swedish invective because cursing seemed a more acceptable expression of his agony and frustration than tears, Nik hurled an icepack at the far wall, which it smacked against before tumbling to the floor. Finding the thump the icepack had made first against the wall and then against the tiles satisfying in a sick way, he continued his tirade, punctuating it by grabbing whatever wasn’t breakable or tied down on the table beside him—a can of Pepsi still unopened and cool from the vending machine, an unused packet of bandages, a box of Band-Aids, a bottle of hand-sanitizer, a Sports Illustrated magazine, a stack of clean towels, and a tin pitcher fortuitously empty of water—and chucking these sundry detritus of the medical room at the wall. 

“Kronwall!” Mike Babcock, wearing his perpetual scowl, had stormed into the room like a thunderhead, as if determined to once again demonstrate his awful knack for showing up just when Nik wanted to see him least. “What the fuck is this racket?” 

Nik considered making a snide response about a tornado but figured that crossing his coach further might be the only thing he could possibly do to make his horrid situation even worse swallowed the sarcasm and mumbled, not answering the question and not feeling the slightest bit apologetic, “Sorry, Coach.” 

“Humph.” Babcock snorted as if he could hear Nik’s thoughts. “The latest medical research suggests that throwing shit won’t help you heal any faster, just so you’re aware, Kronwall.” 

“I didn’t think it would.” Nik bit his lip with enough force to draw blood, telling himself that he would not cry in front of Mike Babcock, who was probably the most dangerous person in the hockey world to be vulnerable around. “I know I’m going to be out for months when I’m supposed to be—“ 

“Supposed to be what?” demanded Babcock when Nik, appalled with how close he had come to pouring out his heart to a coach who didn’t appear to have that organ, abruptly snapped his jaw shut. 

“Playing hockey.” Nik could practically feel his tongue tripping over the words as he hurried to say the first credible thing he could think of. 

“That’s not what you were going to say.” Babcock, who was an inconveniently sharp man, arched an eyebrow. “Try again.” 

“Breaking out.” Once the final syllable had been pried from his stone lips, Nik took a sudden interest in fiddling with the cotton blanket on the gunnery and got so absorbed in this task that he didn’t glance up from it again even when Babcock spoke.

“Okay.” Nik didn’t have to look up to know that he was the lucky recipient of a Babcock glare, since the ferocity of it was burning his forehead like the sun did when he forgot to plaster his pale skin with sunscreen for a trip to the beach. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me that the first or the second time?” 

“I was—“ Nik’s finger looped around a frayed strand of blanket, as he took a deep breath before making the plunge, because he knew that lying to Babcock twice in a row was indicative of a death wish he did not have—“afraid of you.” 

“You were afraid of me?” repeated Babcock, tilting Nik’s chin up, so that Nik was compelled to look at his furrowing features. 

“Yeah.” Mainly to give himself an excuse to break out of his coach’s clutches, Nik nodded. 

“Kronner.” Babcock sighed, and Nik’s eyes widened at the fact that his coach was using his nickname when he thought that Babcock hadn’t even known what it was. “For God’s sake, I’m your coach. I want you to succeed. I’m on your side.” 

“Oh.” Nik wasn’t certain how to reply to this pronouncement, so he just nodded again, feeling like an unenthusiastic bobble-head. “Right.” 

“You’ll heal.” Babcock gave Nik’s shoulder a brisk squeeze, and the fierce stare he riveted on Nik was somehow protective and almost comforting. “Then you’ll have an opportunity to break out.” 

“I can’t believe you’re being nice.” Nik was too stunned to control his mouth. “It’s so weird like the sky switching places with the ground or something.” 

“Your teammates don’t need to hear about this.” Babcock tapped Nik on the head. “It can be our little secret that I’ve got a soft side. Got it?” 

“If anyone asks, you chewed me up and spat me back out again.” Nik could feel a ghost of a grin splitting his cheeks. “It’ll be good for both our tough guy reputations.” 

With a grunt, Babcock spun on his heel and strode out of the room. 

Nik was alone for barely more than a minute before Nick Lidstrom, smelling of shampoo from the shower, entered, closing the door silently in his wake, and settled, graceful and handsome as a swan, on the gunnery next to Nik. Slinking an arm around Nik’s waist, Nick remarked quietly, “I saw Babs leave as I was coming in.” 

“Yep.” Gazing down at the blanket, Nik thought that it would have been easier to lie to any other teammate, because Nick was the one who had seen and touched almost every part of him while he knelt and assured him that it was good. “He gave me an earful for throwing shit everywhere, but it wasn’t too bad—barely a three on the scale of Babcock Blowups.”

“It better not have been.” Nick combed through the sweaty tangles of his hair with gentle fingers. “Because if it was I can talk to him, if you want.”

“I don’t want.” Nik reclined against Nick’s chest, longing to feel the muscles there as proof that Nick was strong enough to keep him safe. “It would just give him an excuse to yell at you, too.” 

“That would make his week.” Nick rained a stream of kisses on the shell of Nik’s ear. “He’s been looking for one since training camp started.” 

“Don’t give him one.” Nik’s comment was transformed into a moan as the fingers that had been stroking his hair slid beneath the neckline of his T-shirt and rubbed against Nik’s nipples, which seemed to be extra-sensitive in a bizarre result from his knee injury. Pleasure mingling with pain made him hard. “It gives the whole team satisfaction that he hasn’t found a reason to rip into you yet.” 

“You’re getting bossy lately.” By nipping Nik’s ear, Nick drew a gasp out of Nik, as his ocean eyes swept down to the bulge in the crotch of Nik’s gym shorts and shone in a manner that made Nik’s intestines knot as though seasick. Yanking down the front of Nik’s shorts and boxers to reveal a cock desperate for attention, Nick ran a teasing hand along its length. “Maybe it’s time for me to remind you who’s in charge here, huh?” 

Being touched like this was just part of his submission when he knelt for Nick, so he felt simultaneously aroused and soothed as Nick’s fingers continued to rub and pull at him. At least, even if he couldn’t kneel because of his torn ligaments for awhile, he could still have this…

Although he wanted to hold on longer, he could feel that he was about to come. Glancing at Nick, he could see that Nick sensed this, as well. Breathless, Nik waited for Nick’s next move. Sometimes Nick would continue his ministrations until Nik came; on other occasions, he would pull up Nik’s clothes and tell him to give him a blowjob. Blowjobs were just another way Nik submitted when he knelt. 

“Since you can’t kneel, I’m going to give you something special.” Nick leaned his head down to lick Nik’s shaft. “Now that Babs is through with you, I think you could use a softer touch. How about you?” 

“I think.” Nik could barely speak when every nerve in his cock was screaming for release as Nick’s tongue fondled it. “You should use your mouth for a different purpose than talking.” 

With a twinkle in his eyes, Nick did, and when he did, Nik found more peace and joy than he could have imagined could exist in a world that less than twenty minutes ago had been dominated by pain and despair. Right now, Nik didn’t care if Loki had shattered a ribcage laughing at him (because the joke was on the trickster god if he had) and Odin had ripped his other eye out to avoid seeing this scene. Everything finally felt like it was supposed to now that he was being loved by Nick.


End file.
